The first of these giant windmills arrived a few years ago and we watch them sometimes turning in the wind on the horizon north east of us.
Many people hated them but I thought they were rather wonderful. Huge moving sculptures. However they are proliferating like acne. I fear that soon every vista and every view will have them. Scotland's beautiful scenery, one of it's few selling points, is being destroyed.
I have listened to people argue about their cost effectiveness and efficiency etc. The one argument that makes very real sense to me is this. There is no point in building more until someone invents a way to store the energy they produce, or devise a sensible way that it can be sent off to other parts of the country that need it. Up in the North here, we already produce more electricity than we can use. Already many of the existing mills are turned off a lot of the time because too much power has been produced. So why build more and ruin the views.
Of course every estate and landowner wants to get in on the act and get a wind farm on their property. The government is still paying huge amounts of taxpayers money to them for doing so.
The estate opposite us is on the market and is not selling. The local crofters did some research because one option was a crofters buyout. They found however that the income from the estate was too little to make it feasable. However, if planning permission is granted for a wind farm, then the estate will suddenly look much more attractive to buyers. It would become an economic possibility. So there are arguments on either side. Do we want a beautiful but dead Scotland or an ugly but alive Scotland?
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